With Issue 4, we’ve gone full circle. Our first year of zines has been a journey of discovery, connection and brilliantly brief writing. We’ve now published 74 different writers, who have each shared their unique voice and perspective.
When reading submissions for Issue 4, we found a few recurring themes: confinement, loss and nostalgia were present in many pieces, but also hope, perseverance and the unchanging cycles of life. We were struck by the power and resilience of storytelling, the precision with which a feeling can be shared, the ability of good writing to transport a reader to unfamiliar places and times.
The poems and stories chosen for Issue 4 are bold and brief. There are snapshots of memory, desire, pain, childhood, entrapment and freedom; like trees in a forest, they each stand alone but are stronger together. Read them however you want: from the beginning, middle or end, back-to-front, upside down, inside out… each order will tell a new story.
We are proud to share these wonderful words and hope you enjoy reading them as much as we have.
Daniel & Elinor
POEMS
Sadie Maskery, ‘Swift’
DC Swanson, ‘Remnants’
Anthony Salandy, ‘Sourdough Sardonic’
Richard LeDue, ‘Injuries’
Ruth Callaghan do Valle, Two Poems
Shane Schick, ‘Knight, Night’
Elizabeth Guilt, ‘Desire Lines’
Shiksha Dheda, ‘Sunflowers’
Heather Sager, ‘lightning bolts’
Craig Kittner, ‘it’s one of those things’
Lauren Thomas, ‘To A Child’
STORIES
Zahirra Dayal, ‘Untameable’
Elizabeth M Castillo, ‘This thread’
Martha Lane, Two Stories
David Tay, ‘I trust you now, can you tell?’
E. F. S. Byrne, ‘The Touring Test’
Briefly Write 